Making Anna Proud

* A reader wants to know if anybody else was married to the beast. You can post it under “Feast of the Beast” or here if you prefer.

* Also, does anybody know how to get through a flashback when you have been stuck in it for months?

*I’m looking for people who have been used as breeders in a cult setting for submissions for an anthology I hope to put together. Even if you have not been abused this way, could you spread the word and tell all your survivor friends and therapists or pastors you know about the project? They can write me at rahome@ra-info.org for more information. Thank you so much!

Making Anna Proud

I’m a fan of Anna Kunnecke, who is an online life coach. I haven’t been a client of hers, but she throws out free useful little things to do to get your life going more smoothly. And I think she is hilarious.

Now, every year I have a terrible times with taxes. It’s so bad that some years I have said that the Ides of April are a cult holiday. It’s a meeting of three fears: authority, money, and the post office. (I imagine not everyone shares my fear of post offices – if you do, I would love to hear if you have figured out what it is all about. The only thing I have remembered is my mother telling me that if I didn’t behave, she would put a stamp on me and mail me. Where? She didn’t say. I didn’t speculate, I don’t think. But I did imagine being stuffed into a mail box.)

So, convergence of phobias. Fear of envelops. Fear of writing a check. Fear of addressing an envelop. Fear of putting the check into it and sealing it. Oh! I almost forgot the stamp. And worst of all, fear of actually mailing it.

When the taxes were over and done with and mailed, I was relieved, pleased with myself, maybe even proud. I mailed them two days early so I didn’t have to worry about them putting me in prison because they were late. I neglected to worry about going to prison for making a mistake and that was very nice.

That very day, Anna sent out her weekly email. She’s addressing last year’s me, who scolded myself for still being stuck with all these stupid anxiety-provoking, procrastination-provoking phobias. Here’s what she said, edited down a bit.
“It’s a little bit like the way that my family is about airports. We have, collectively, spent about 4,000 years in airports – dropping each other off, picking each other up, saying hello, saying goodbye – and instead of being blasé about the whole thing, it’s as though the emotions just grow bigger each time. It’s as if every painful goodbye wells up in me every time I say goodbye, and it gets harder, not easier. We dread these airport partings so much that we have moved to a strict curbside drop-off policy, quick and clean, love-you-bye-kiss-wave-drive away-and-cry.

“We talk about this amongst ourselves, how instead of getting easier it seems to get harder, and how that doesn’t make any sense.

“But it does make sense. Because we are humans, and we remember things. Our minds, sometimes, imperfectly – but our bodies remember.

“So here is the whole reason I am telling you all this.

“If there is something in your life that is hard for you, and every time it comes up you think, THIS SHOULD BE EASIER BY NOW WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME, this is your permission slip to knock that shit right off.

“Give yourself some grace, instead.

“Give yourself some kindness.

“Give yourself a fucking break, okay?

“Some things are harder, even for powerhouses.

“Maybe calling the insurance company is really hard for you, but you’re amazing at being with people in unbearable grief. Maybe dealing with your ex leaves you shaken and hollow-eyed, but you can wrangle a gnarly tax return like a superhero. Maybe you’re basically a total boss about EVERYTHING…unless your stepmom calls.

“We’re all strong in some areas, and we have some things that still reduce us to puddles of melting jello.

“Just be kind to the melting jello that is you.

“It is not the only part of you. It is just a part of you that is reminding you to be human. And human is messy. But human is also sweet.

“So here’s the deal. When I’m a mess this week, I’m going to be kind to myself.

“And when you’re a mess this week, you’re going to be kind to YOURSELF.

“Deal?”

I silently say, “Yup, Anna, deal. You’d be proud of me for being kind to my yearly April 15 puddle of jello. And right now I’ll try and not put myself down for not remembering,after all this damn time, all of those horrible things that happened at Beltane.

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29 thoughts on “Making Anna Proud”

See, you all make it sound so easy peasy. Fuck that! We ain’t gonna ask real sweet n shit! We want her fucked up. She have does nothing good for more than three days. Get it? 3! 3 days! And you want me to do it? HA! That’s a good one.
We got a blocker that makes her do other stuff. Like we read these sweet answers, then we make her do somethin else. Like she just put the tablet thing DOWN,
We got so many ways to distract her. Good ole doc Rea said she had the strongest defense system he ever met. Got that right buddy! Not just me getting pissed off at answers, lots of us. We block her. I would be great as a blocker in football!!! Word!!!

Guess you find us all sickening sweet, right? Back in the cult nobody could be called sickening sweet, or little Miss Sunshine, or Pollyanna. I wonder if you find those are the good old days.

Why is it threatening to you if she reads sweet answers? You must feel there is some real danger present or you wouldn’t be bothered blocking her. Danger to you, or to her, or to everybody. Because if you didn’t think there was danger near by, you wouldn’t waste your energy – you wouldn’t care if she read what’s written here, or played games, or tried to learn Japanese. It would be all sort of ho-hum.

What did you want to be doing all those years when you were kept down? I mean besides being angry at her and hurting her for doing that to you. There must have been things that you were curious about and eanted to experience.

Anybody nice is a LIAR! Nobody says nice things without wanting something. They wanna fuck you, beat you,make you do something to someone. Ya can’t trust nice. There is no nice.

We couldn’t hear nothing cos we were u der the black! Stupid! Ya don’t hear see feel nothing under the black!

How come no one answered bout the bleeding?! It’s cos all the shit she supposedly did was all a lie. There were no babies. No rapes. All fucking lies! “Just go with it Tracy, if your reacting like this it had to have happened.
Well if it did, it magically fixed itself. There were no babies or rapes, she made it all up!!!!!!!! She’s a great actress ain’t she?!!!!!

Some pple are nice just to soften you up and trick you. Get to trust them, then pull the rug out from under you. Some pple are nice because it makes them happy to be nice. If you have never known a person like that, of course you don’t believe they exist. Maybe you don’t believe happiness exists, either. We all are like that – we believe that what we know exists, and then when we start exploring the world, we see other things, new things, and get to know them and then we believe they exist, too.

For me, being nice makes me happy and being mean makes me feel terrible. And I don’t like to feel terrible – been there, done that, got the T shirt. So I do things that make me happy – not just being nice, other things too.

“Under the black.” I’m not stupid, I know what you mean by that. But you didn’t say so and I can’t read your mind, you know. I wonder what it was like when you came up – whether it felt like it was the same day as when you were put under the black, or whether you knew that time had passed. I wonder how you learned what had happened when you were down there. Different people have different experiences and there is no way for me to know what happened or what it was like for them unless they tell me.

Why didn’t I mention the bleeding? I meant to, and then I had to do some other things – I forget what – and then I had forgotten I wanted to answer it. Sorry about forgetting. This is what I wanted to say –

That happened to me, too. I bled the first few times I had sex as an adult. It didn’t make sense because I was used for sex when I was a kid and a teenager. But I learned that the walls of the vagina can be sewed together after the hymen is gone. Not completely, but tightly enough to have it rip when a penis goes in. Eventually the wound healed and I didn’t bleed any more. Not much is written about this happening in America, but if you read about “female circumcision” in Africa (which is wide spread) you can learn a lot. I didn’t learn about female circumcision until I was in my forties. Now, with the Internet, it is easier to learn about such things.

When I had my first child, my vagina walls were about to tear and so the doctor cut them – that’s called an episiotomy – and they had to be sewn back together again. It took several weeks to heal completely and it hurt. My second child’s head was smaller and there was no tearing.

Wow, that freaked me out…..an answer riht after I wrote.
I’m going to try to respond, but it’s a real mess in here.

You’ll be hearing from Just me, Me, Blacky, tracyanne, Susie, and others who have been very noisy. I honestly don’t know who this one is, the one who’s writing now. They keep my head hurting so bad from the switching..

We don’t trust . We either jump in nd trust someone, and then get fucked over, or doubt and not trust. Bobby is a large t example of jumping in and getting fucked. We really need to get over that, but don’t know what it is that hurt us so deeply.

Okay, I’m one of the Amalgammated ones from the council. We had all the heads of the groups be a member of the council. They were responsible for passing the info on to their group.. They all kind of blended, sort of.

I’d like to hear what your idea of being put under the black meant. To us, Tracy put all of us, Dark and Light side under a think black rubber blanket. We just didn’t exist. Soundproof, light proof…..We didn’t exist..
Then one day it was lifted and we went on as normal, like nothing happened.
secret—-Tracy is really really bad never saw her like this..sshhhh

We aren’t consistent in anything. ,talking to system, YUCK, HATE HEARING THAT JUST SHUT UP ABOUT JT. (Blacky)

Were not sure what or why were writing. We have nothing to say.. We tried. Sorry We’re not as advanced and intelligent as you all.

Well, I see the black from above. It is like I am lying at the edge of a mountain and looking down on just total blackness. At first I thought it was my depression, which I have always called black (except when it is better, I call it grey.) Now I think of it as a cloak of amnesia.

My mind is organized differently. I don;t have alters with their own personalities and histories and specialties, like most multiples do. I am all fragmented, into little pieces that come together to do things. Like maybe 10 pieces will drive a car. It isn’t always the same group. When they are together, they don’t have a name. So there is no one entity that has a memory, for example. When I get a memory it must be a group of fragments that were there when it happened that came together temporarily. No group has ever come together and told me what it is like down there. I don’t know how the pieces get chosen to do something – there must be a part of me that knows how to assemble fragments into a working group, but I haven’t found it.

You are one of the first people I have ever heard so closely describe my experience. I have found more resources on dissociation lately that are more helpful, but usually it makes me feel kind of like a freak or like no one will believe me or understand what I am saying if I try to explain it.

So are there lots of you out now? From both the Dark and the Light side? And everybody wants a turn being the one that is *really* out and that is why there is so much switching? I can understand why everybody wants to be out after having been suppressed for s long.

I hope that everybody understands that there is just one body that has to be shared. Your picture of yourself may be very different from the body that is actually there today. Like you may see yourself as a child or a man or even an animal. But there is only one body and that body has to be taken care of because you can’t get another.

Also, maybe some of you think you don’t need a body to live, to exist. But you do – even if you think you are immortal. If the body dies, all of you die, too. So I hope that even though it is a very confusing time and some want to do one thing and others another, you have to keep the body going if you want to be out later on. It needs food, nourishing food, not just junk food, water, and sleep: those are the basics. If you keep the body clean and dress it in clean clothes and give it some exercise, it will last longer. Bodies, like cars, need upkeep. You have to take care of them.

Thanx sarcoline. I guess we are grabbing at straws in hopes of finding something to help us. We are in real bad shape. She’s looking now for psychiatrist hospitals online. The one we wanna go to is in Louisiana. It’s a trauma hospital, takes. Care of the vets coming home with PTSD and a unit for “regular” trauma peeps. And they now SRA real well. But we have to pay $2500 up front and that we don’t have.
We watched a movie the other night and they mentioned River Oaks hospital twice Was cool.
Hope your doing better than me!
Hugggssss. Me and the gang

Hello all. Just came back from 5 weeks at River Oaks in Harahan LOUISIANA.
Its my third time there over 20 yrs.
I highly recommend River Oaks. The staff is amazing,. Therapists are top notch. My first time there I had Scott as my therapist. He’s still there. I think that says a lot about the quality of staff.
You see your therapist 5 days a week, your psychiatric doc 3 days a week.
If you have questions, please contact me
Blessings
Tracy
Takes Medicare and private insurances.

Welcome back, Tracy! I am so happy for you. I hope that you have resolved many, many things and that you and your other inner people are at peace now. Please know that I thought of you a lot and was hoping that you were getting the help you so richly deserve.

Fuck all this shit. The fucking page isn’t there bout Beltane. That’s good cos she’s not supposed to know. We get to torment the stupid bitch forever. She is stupid. And ya know why.? Cos the stupid bitch got pregnant and put us all away. She told us she was putting us down under the black cover for 16 yrs so she could raise her baby. Know how long that lasted? 18yrs! We didn’t talk about it, nothi g. She decided! We do t care cos she’s not supposed to know. Her dad said she was stupid anyway so when she can’t understand or know shit, that’s why. And she’s still stupid! All you are writing books and lecturing…….what’s she doing? Get to g fat and laying around all day!!
I’m so glad to be be out. She just met me and Smitty awhile ago. You don’t want to meet me. I’m nasty. I want to fucking kill the people who drive those cars with the loud noise. We will. And we’ll kill her too. We always make her think about it. It’s fun. We got it worked out but it will take time.
But she’s so stupid for taking all those years off to raise her daughter. She really loves her, it now she knows why she still stupid. We kept it from her til just the other day. We finally let her remember! We’re brilliant ! HA!
I’ll bet lot of you hate the word fuck right. FUCK IT! I don’t care! She only slightly knows me. Just wait! Yeah, guess you figured were pissed! Really bad pissed! I ain’t signing this tracy…….I’m Blacky.! Word!

I know your gonna tell us to get our own page cos were not as civil and righteous as you all. Fine. Kick us out. People always leave us anyway. Fuck it

Hi Blacky, I’m Jean. I don’t mind the word fuck, as a matter of fact I use it quite a bit.

I think I understand why she would put you back down to raise her daughter – she probably thought she couldn’t be a good Mom if you all were around. But it must have been awful to be shoved away like that for so many years. Were you able to see what was happening or was in just, like, that whole time didn’t exist for you??

You are furious at her for making you stay away for 18 years aren’t you? And you are aiming your anger at her. You know, her father probably had a lot to do with making her who she is now and making you who you are now. He doesn’t sound nice to me, loving fathers don;t call their kids stupid. Mine called me stupid and did mean things to me and that was a lie. I really am very smart but even today I often feel like I am dumb.

I fixed the link to the Beltane page. And no, I am not going to kick you off for swearing and being angry. If you mke your own page, I would like to read it, so let us know here, okay? And say hello to Smitty for me.

Hi….I don’t know what goes on during the holy days. My body reacts, but not me. I tried to get to the link for the explanation, it says the page is no longer there.
Could you check on it Jean please? What’s been going on lately. I’ve been up n down.

It was a typo: I corrected it and checked the others while I was there. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Chocolate pudding with chocolate ice cream and fudge sauce, please.

Have you tried talking to your body? “Hi body. It looks like you are doing all the reacting for me and that you are remembering and responding to things that happened around these holy days. I’d love to know what you know and maybe share the burden with you, because you are taking on so much.”

It’s possible that things will just pop into your head, with or without emotion. Or you might get just an emotion. Or you might need to talk more to your body, thank it for taking on so much all these years, say you respect its strength, soothe it. Cause the body is part of us, and is sort of like an alter, a tired hurting alter that could use some attention and caring.

Hallo,😊
When a Flashback of a memory stays that much time in our head and wount go, even if we worked a time with it, we stopp. It‘s important to us to find the mechanism behind then. So we pause to work with the inner people, who expirience the Flashback all the time and surch for them, who have to trigger it. Then we tray to speak with them an find solutions. This leads us to the reason of our Problems and allows to calm down the Situation from another point of view. Perhaps this could be helpful in your Situation too?

I understand! Talk to the inside people who are triggering the flashback and find out why they want it to be so long. Wish I had known this thirty years ago when I was having months-long flashbacks. Thanks for sharing this!

Hi Jean lady! Im Josh! Way cool! I get to talk! Im smart and protect the Light zide. Thats whatme nx my boys do. We ha e wzy cool army ztuff on anx guns! And hand grenades!
I know you don’t wanna talk to me so I’ll go away, like always. I wanna talk and play!

It’s Just Me. Right away I get brain noise., but I’ll try to answer.

Blacky kinda was there. He wasn’t around, like hadn’t come out yet. .He knows what it’s like go be put down, but it’s a fuzzy darkness, then like a awakening and you just walked out into where it was light.

He really keeps his
S ears open for those loud cars with heavy exhaust noise. He’s in the background and waits. He gets really pissed off when he hears it. He clenched his jaw and makes z made face.
That’s all we know bout him. He’s mad and yucky so we don’t know much bout him.

Distracter and Thought Taker made me drift away., like always.

Don’t know what you want to know, so ask. Sometimes we can’t answer right away, the nice way you right and the questions sometimes trigger us.

If you really want to talk to Blacky, say so. But you know he’s not very nice.

We wrote down all the alters that were able to give us there names. Have about 45. Think some have faded away.